Rapture: A Lost Cause
by Pyxidium
Summary: This is a poem I wrote for AP English. It's supposed to mirror the structure of Canterbury Tales.


**Rapture: A Lost Cause**

In the middle of the ocean,

Under the sea,

Lies one man's devotion

To his life-long dream.

His dream was to construct

A utopian metropolis

Free from the obstruction

Of global politics.

A place where the artist

Would not fear the censor,

Allowing his work to consist

Of ideas much denser.

The scientist could live with ease,

Unconcerned with petty morality.

He could do what he please

No matter how gritty.

But at last this utopia,

Rapture was its name,

Became, in time, a dystopia

For the seas to reclaim.

Almost all its denizens

Went clinically insane

At the hand of a "medicine"

Whose powers proclaimed

To give people powers

And heal all their wounds.

But, instead it showered

Them with impending doom.

Almost everyone left

Has lost his or her mind,

But the sane ones are filled with regret

Of a world left behind.

A Utopian survives

In the city that once thrived.

It was his dream to build

The undersea city which he filled

With the best minds

At the present time.

He used his wealth

To lay down a city of the self

Where a man was entitled to the sweat of his brow

And the crops which he harvested by the blade of his plow.

These belonged only to him and not to the state,

Or a God in the sky who demands the food off your plate.

A Scientist also lives to carry out his work.

In the shadows of the Medical Pavilion he lurks.

He's gone mad with the years

And is convinced that he hears

Callings from the Goddess of Beauty,

Imploring him that it is his solemn duty

To eradicate imperfection

And move in a direction

To grace society

With the virtues of Aphrodite.

He uses the "medicine", which is a powerful drug,

Extracted from the body of a deep-sea slug

To alter the flesh and mold the face

Into a form which he deems of superior grace.

An Artist dwells in the halls of Fort Frolic.

He creates masterpieces which are all symbolic

Of his friends and his foes of which he has many

(The latter of which he has plenty).

He spends hours and hours

Weeding out the doubters

Of his ideas and his art.

It was easy enough to start

A collection of his finest sculptures

(A doubtless perk of coming to Rapture).

All he had to do was identify his enemies faster

Than they could suspect him, and then artfully encase them in plaster.

He was extremely paranoid

And so it was hard to avoid

His watchful eye.

It was no use to try

To feign allegiance to this man,

For once he deemed you a detriment to his plan,

You would become an addition

To his artistic collection.

There was a Psychiatrist whose goal

Was to stress the importance of the whole.

To worship the individual was in her eyes blasphemy.

Instead, she attempted to join Rapture in one big family.

She was head of a psychiatric clinic which had been given to her,

Where she kept most of her clients as her prisoners

To perform on them experiments of the mind.

In a dire attempt to find

A way to create a true utopian figurehead,

She used the thoughts and memories of the living and dead

That would bring to life her creation

And pull Rapture out of decline and into salvation.

Among the residents was a clever German woman who

Took it upon herself to

Unlock the secrets of the drug that drove people insane.

She did it not for money, or glory, or fame,

But for her sheer love of scientific pursuit.

It was not at all her intention to pollute

The city with what she first had thought of as a gift.

If only she had been wise enough to foresee such a disaster.

She was by far the purest of all in Rapture.

There was another scientist by the name of Gil Alexander.

He was humble and kind, hard work was his standard.

His drive was discovery and pleasing his superiors,

Despite his submissive position, he never felt inferior.

He was a clever man, but perhaps a bit naïve.

He worked his way up until he believed

He was ready for his ultimate project, the last on the list

Which consisted of working with the corrupt psychiatrist.

He was to be the first to be tested to become the city's utopian,

But the experiment went wrong and ultimately ruined him.

Now he still lives, but in a different way.

He's gone insane like the rest, forever he shall stay.

In the middle of the sea,

Under the waves,

Lies a city where people are free

To dig their own graves.

Not many survive

In this paradise lost;

The longer you're alive,

The crueler the cost.

Heed this warning, traveler:

From wherever you hail,

Do not come to Rapture

For it has failed.


End file.
